Zach Lowe out at ESPN

[dhsilv2]

This is CRAZY news. I'm shocked. For non-click bait, Zach Lowe is basically the most popular basketball journalist.

If he stays in the basketball journalism/analysis space, this could be exciting. A version of his podcast where he's no longer obligated to interview the same boring ESPN employees anymore (McNenamin is who I'm thinking of specifically). Overall, Lowe's content changed over time to become more suitable for ESPN, and the quality of his analysis was lessened by the requirement to meet ESPN pundits halfway, and talk about the Lakers no matter what.

Not sure who can pay him what ESPN was paying him though, so I'm sorry for him losing that bag. He can work basically wherever he wants, but I hope he goes somewhere where he can bring elevated content.

Lowe's talked pretty openly that a bigger part of his drop off in quality analysis is just that he doesn't watch as must ball anymore due to his kids. Which seems reasonable enough. To be a true basketball nerd, you kinda gotta put in crazy hours.

[yosemiteben]

For all the praise he receives, he isn't very edifying.

Agreed, never struck me as a real basketball guy and provided obvious opinions.

I don't feel like it's possible to routinely listen to his podcast and came away with this take.

[dhsilv2]

Hard news is more expensive and generates less revenue

All of live TV is moving to the Fox News model of opining on the news instead of breaking the news

yup, there's a reason they kept Stephen A Smith around. It's not about quality, it's about views. Unfortunately, the public wants to watch garbage rather than good analysis.

Screaming ear rappin smith keeps his job because he works 18 hours a day more so than anything else. He might be the worst human on earth, but the man works hard.

[jvsimonetti0514]

The whole media industry is in dire straits right now. My company had a lot of layoffs this week and all the other legacy media companies have been firing people all year. Woj’s “retirement” screamed cost cutting to me when it happened and this kinda confirms it to me. When my company lets go of top talent they usually say they’re moving onto other projects or will have some new role at the company and they’re never heard from again. Can’t fire Woj cuz it be a PR disaster but you can let him find some new role that doesn’t compete with what espn does. It sadly makes sense too cuz Woj’s breaking news tweets probably doesn’t get too many people to turn on espn and neither does Zach analysis to warrant their salaries. I’m sure bill Simmons will hire him as soon as his no compete is up and he’ll be fine but it’s sad to see these networks falling apart and unable to retain talent people.

[HotelVitale]

ESPN Wokecenter

Gotcha, Zach Lowe is not only not 'woke' but it so not woke that he was fired.

The ringer or Substack?

My guess is he has a no-compete clause but McShay works around that and goes on Russillo's pod every week. Wouldn't be shocked if Bill devotes one pod a week with Lowe during the NBA season.

Isn't Simmons' whole thing to kinda underpay his writers and also make them produce a lot of content? Feels like that's his business model, never get into any bidding wars etc.

[azcatz11]

I hope this is what happens, and I think it will. I still really like Lowe, but the last couple of years or so I’ve felt like his pod wasn’t quite what it was at the beginning of the decade/at the end of the last. He and Bill still play off each other really well so I hope we get more of that.

The issue I had with his pod is that he only brings in ESPN-adjacent talent. He'll bring in a beat reporter here and there, but it was usually Pelton, Marks, etc on the show.

Yup, the quality of his guests had declined too. Way too much Marks and Bontemps.

If BS brings back Lowe it’s game over. I would love to see Lowe join russillo and bill on their weekly nba pod but idk if that’s too many cooks in the kitchen.

Or they could do Lowe as just a standalone but maybe he will ask for too much money.

[Chuck Everett]

He did the podcast with Simmons and mentioned hoping that their coverage isn't all-Lakers, all the time. Apparently, that gets you the chop. This is a dumbass company.

[yosemiteben]

Ironically on his last podcast he mentioned getting a slap on the wrist from ESPN for going on JJ's podcast (since it wasn't an ESPN one), and said he got JJ to agree to do his first post-coach interview in exchange for Lowe going on JJ and Lebron's podcast (also not an ESPN one) to make the people at ESPN happy. Wonder if they specifically waited until after that podcast to air because JJ said he wasn't going to do any other podcasts other than Lowe's unless else was forced to.

[ForeverTFC]

Very weird. Lowe has one of the highest rated basketball pods in the country and has a top 25 sports pod in terms of ratings. Something must have happened.

[sikma42]

This is CRAZY news. I'm shocked. For non-click bait, Zach Lowe is basically the most popular basketball journalist.

If he stays in the basketball journalism/analysis space, this could be exciting. A version of his podcast where he's no longer obligated to interview the same boring ESPN employees anymore (McNenamin is who I'm thinking of specifically). Overall, Lowe's content changed over time to become more suitable for ESPN, and the quality of his analysis was lessened by the requirement to meet ESPN pundits halfway, and talk about the Lakers no matter what.

Not sure who can pay him what ESPN was paying him though, so I'm sorry for him losing that bag. He can work basically wherever he wants, but I hope he goes somewhere where he can bring elevated content.

Lowe's talked pretty openly that a bigger part of his drop off in quality analysis is just that he doesn't watch as must ball anymore due to his kids. Which seems reasonable enough. To be a true basketball nerd, you kinda gotta put in crazy hours.

How is that reasonable? I like Lowe and not familiar with the statement, but having kids isn’t really an excuse for not producing quality content.

With that said, I don’t really see any drop in analysis and I never thought he was good at understanding game film.


Sent from my iPhone using RealGM Forums

[cupcakesnake]

This is CRAZY news. I'm shocked. For non-click bait, Zach Lowe is basically the most popular basketball journalist.

If he stays in the basketball journalism/analysis space, this could be exciting. A version of his podcast where he's no longer obligated to interview the same boring ESPN employees anymore (McNenamin is who I'm thinking of specifically). Overall, Lowe's content changed over time to become more suitable for ESPN, and the quality of his analysis was lessened by the requirement to meet ESPN pundits halfway, and talk about the Lakers no matter what.

Not sure who can pay him what ESPN was paying him though, so I'm sorry for him losing that bag. He can work basically wherever he wants, but I hope he goes somewhere where he can bring elevated content.

Lowe's talked pretty openly that a bigger part of his drop off in quality analysis is just that he doesn't watch as must ball anymore due to his kids. Which seems reasonable enough. To be a true basketball nerd, you kinda gotta put in crazy hours.

I think that's reasonable, of course, and sure that's the biggest part of it. Alongside that, for him to continue to progress at ESPN, he had to grow into more of a talk show host type. Even on the Lowe Post, he consistently became more polished as a big production host type, and a little less earnest about quality basketball discussion.

Due to either or both, Lowe recycled his takes a lot more. Once Lowe had his "take" on a team, we'd read it and hear it a dozen times. He no longer had comprehensive understanding based in extensive film study, and had to lean on single insights. More like a smart realgm poster who wasn't able to watch as many games this season, than a professional analyst. He's still one of my favorite bball journalists, and probably my favorite amongst ones who have reached that level of success.

[the sea duck]

Why would ESPN dump their top NBA Analyst three weeks before the NBA season starts?

Did Woj see the writing on the wall and get out before he got canned?

it makes me think woj got the scoop, as is typical, and left them before they could get rid of him.

[165bows]

The whole media industry is in dire straits right now. My company had a lot of layoffs this week and all the other legacy media companies have been firing people all year. Woj’s “retirement” screamed cost cutting to me when it happened and this kinda confirms it to me. When my company lets go of top talent they usually say they’re moving onto other projects or will have some new role at the company and they’re never heard from again. Can’t fire Woj cuz it be a PR disaster but you can let him find some new role that doesn’t compete with what espn does. It sadly makes sense too cuz Woj’s breaking news tweets probably doesn’t get too many people to turn on espn and neither does Zach analysis to warrant their salaries. I’m sure bill Simmons will hire him as soon as his no compete is up and he’ll be fine but it’s sad to see these networks falling apart and unable to retain talent people.

Nah espn is awful and an embarrassment, them falling apart is a good thing.

Anyways he really seemed like he had jumped the shark by the finals, if not before. So maybe it’s his kids or maybe they wanted him to say certain things he didn’t want to get behind so it was an easy call for everyone involved.

We will see.

[the sea duck]

The issue I had with his pod is that he only brings in ESPN-adjacent talent. He'll bring in a beat reporter here and there, but it was usually Pelton, Marks, etc on the show.

Yup, the quality of his guests had declined too. Way too much Marks and Bontemps.

If BS brings back Lowe it’s game over. I would love to see Lowe join russillo and bill on their weekly nba pod but idk if that’s too many cooks in the kitchen.

Or they could do Lowe as just a standalone but maybe he will ask for too much money.

or rotate them in and out so there's always two of them but they can churn out more podcasts since they don't need all three.

[cupcakesnake]

This is CRAZY news. I'm shocked. For non-click bait, Zach Lowe is basically the most popular basketball journalist.

If he stays in the basketball journalism/analysis space, this could be exciting. A version of his podcast where he's no longer obligated to interview the same boring ESPN employees anymore (McNenamin is who I'm thinking of specifically). Overall, Lowe's content changed over time to become more suitable for ESPN, and the quality of his analysis was lessened by the requirement to meet ESPN pundits halfway, and talk about the Lakers no matter what.

Not sure who can pay him what ESPN was paying him though, so I'm sorry for him losing that bag. He can work basically wherever he wants, but I hope he goes somewhere where he can bring elevated content.

Lowe's talked pretty openly that a bigger part of his drop off in quality analysis is just that he doesn't watch as must ball anymore due to his kids. Which seems reasonable enough. To be a true basketball nerd, you kinda gotta put in crazy hours.

How is that reasonable? I like Lowe and not familiar with the statement, but having kids isn’t really an excuse for not producing quality content.

With that said, I don’t really see any drop in analysis and I never thought he was good at understanding game film.


Sent from my iPhone using RealGM Forums

Back when Zach Lowe was at Sports Illustrated, he'd do a summertime top 100 players, and I'd never seen anyone have quite that level of detail of guys at the back end of the top 100. It was very clear he was watching film on all these players, understood how they defend, where their scoring comes from, etc.

Even at Grantland, I found his analysis to be head and shoulders above his peers. Whether you think he's "good at understanding game film" or not, he was clearly watching a ton of it back then. He's not a coach, so there's limit on what he knows about strategy (names of coverages, cuts, plays, reads etc.) but he was also talking to a ton of coaches and learning a ton. Before grantland died, Lowe had a pretty high quality of guest, and smarter basketball minds all seemed to respect him a lot.

I think lately he's watched the bare minimum of footage. Whenever he has smarter guests on, he gets a little more jokey to hide the knowledge disparity. He even added an anti-analytics persona to use when he needs it "SNORPS and GLORPS and VORPS" as he calls them when he can't have a discussion about what the data says.

[HotelVitale]

This is CRAZY news. I'm shocked. For non-click bait, Zach Lowe is basically the most popular basketball journalist.

If he stays in the basketball journalism/analysis space, this could be exciting. A version of his podcast where he's no longer obligated to interview the same boring ESPN employees anymore (McNenamin is who I'm thinking of specifically). Overall, Lowe's content changed over time to become more suitable for ESPN, and the quality of his analysis was lessened by the requirement to meet ESPN pundits halfway, and talk about the Lakers no matter what.

Not sure who can pay him what ESPN was paying him though, so I'm sorry for him losing that bag. He can work basically wherever he wants, but I hope he goes somewhere where he can bring elevated content.

Lowe's talked pretty openly that a bigger part of his drop off in quality analysis is just that he doesn't watch as must ball anymore due to his kids. Which seems reasonable enough. To be a true basketball nerd, you kinda gotta put in crazy hours.

I think that's reasonable, of course, and sure that's the biggest part of it. Alongside that, for him to continue to progress at ESPN, he had to grow into more of a talk show host type. Even on the Lowe Post, he consistently became more polished as a big production host type, and a little less earnest about quality basketball discussion.

Due to either or both, Lowe recycled his takes a lot more. Once Lowe had his "take" on a team, we'd read it and hear it a dozen times. He no longer had comprehensive understanding based in extensive film study, and had to lean on single insights. More like a smart realgm poster who wasn't able to watch as many games this season, than a professional analyst. He's still one of my favorite bball journalists, and probably my favorite amongst ones who have reached that level of success.

I was as big a fan as anyone in his glory days but I found him pretty unlistenable the last couple years. He also made his 'takes' really simple and wasn't responding to nuance or changes on the fly, and he also moved through things so quickly and randomly. He and a guest would be talking about something and then he'd just say 'okay so switching gears' mid sentence. That's strange on its own but it also felt like he was under-prepared and sort of trying to shuffle his way through episodes.

He's pretty good at improvising and shuffling so it probably could've still worked in smaller doses, but I've tended to just avoid the show altogether unless there was nothing interesting in the other 4-5 pods I listen to.

[bisme37]

I hate watch NBA Today regularly. It's absurdly terrible but it's the only daily NBA show and I'm a big NBA fan. So I record it and fast forward through thinking surely this NBA show will say something that interests me for at least a few minutes. That usually doesn't happen but I still waste time with it lol.

I feel like Lowe used to be much better but over time got infected by Perkins and the other professional morons. Instead of giving useful basketball analysis they seem to compete to say the stupidest possible thing so they get attention on the internet or whatever.

So yeah this is surprising news and a bad look for ESPN, but at the same time the show sucks with or without him so who really cares. Best of luck to Zach though.

[Pointgod]

Is the appetite for hot takes really that insatiable? Every day society gets more and more mindless.

Read on Twitter

[dhsilv2]

This is CRAZY news. I'm shocked. For non-click bait, Zach Lowe is basically the most popular basketball journalist.

If he stays in the basketball journalism/analysis space, this could be exciting. A version of his podcast where he's no longer obligated to interview the same boring ESPN employees anymore (McNenamin is who I'm thinking of specifically). Overall, Lowe's content changed over time to become more suitable for ESPN, and the quality of his analysis was lessened by the requirement to meet ESPN pundits halfway, and talk about the Lakers no matter what.

Not sure who can pay him what ESPN was paying him though, so I'm sorry for him losing that bag. He can work basically wherever he wants, but I hope he goes somewhere where he can bring elevated content.

Lowe's talked pretty openly that a bigger part of his drop off in quality analysis is just that he doesn't watch as must ball anymore due to his kids. Which seems reasonable enough. To be a true basketball nerd, you kinda gotta put in crazy hours.

How is that reasonable? I like Lowe and not familiar with the statement, but having kids isn’t really an excuse for not producing quality content.

With that said, I don’t really see any drop in analysis and I never thought he was good at understanding game film.


Sent from my iPhone using RealGM Forums

Lowe was basically watching every single game of the season in his 20's. He isn't anymore. Nobody else was putting in the work he was, why wouldn't he drop off some, to have a normal human life?

[dhsilv2]

This is CRAZY news. I'm shocked. For non-click bait, Zach Lowe is basically the most popular basketball journalist.

If he stays in the basketball journalism/analysis space, this could be exciting. A version of his podcast where he's no longer obligated to interview the same boring ESPN employees anymore (McNenamin is who I'm thinking of specifically). Overall, Lowe's content changed over time to become more suitable for ESPN, and the quality of his analysis was lessened by the requirement to meet ESPN pundits halfway, and talk about the Lakers no matter what.

Not sure who can pay him what ESPN was paying him though, so I'm sorry for him losing that bag. He can work basically wherever he wants, but I hope he goes somewhere where he can bring elevated content.

Lowe's talked pretty openly that a bigger part of his drop off in quality analysis is just that he doesn't watch as must ball anymore due to his kids. Which seems reasonable enough. To be a true basketball nerd, you kinda gotta put in crazy hours.

I think that's reasonable, of course, and sure that's the biggest part of it. Alongside that, for him to continue to progress at ESPN, he had to grow into more of a talk show host type. Even on the Lowe Post, he consistently became more polished as a big production host type, and a little less earnest about quality basketball discussion.

Due to either or both, Lowe recycled his takes a lot more. Once Lowe had his "take" on a team, we'd read it and hear it a dozen times. He no longer had comprehensive understanding based in extensive film study, and had to lean on single insights. More like a smart realgm poster who wasn't able to watch as many games this season, than a professional analyst. He's still one of my favorite bball journalists, and probably my favorite amongst ones who have reached that level of success.

Yeah, I mean it's just unrealistic for any one person to watch every game like he was obviously doing (or nearly so) for a stretch. When lowe would break down plays he liked on 10 win teams...it was just a level of basketball nerd in analysis you just can't expect to last.